Spineplate 101

Spineplate is weird for a soulless. This is a fact, and perhaps it is not as interesting a fact to others as it is to me. Spineplate has a six in Charisma, not because it is a dump stat or because he's ugly or anything of that nature. Charisma has absolutely nothing to do with physical appearance. He has a six in Charisma because he is one of a kind, has been enslaved for decades in the mines of Beltan, and because he has trouble relating to others. He doesn't understand humans and other humanoids, or even others of his kind. He's basically a construct crippled by social anxiety disorder, or perhaps a fantasy world equivalent.

In their natural environment soulless are intelligent and deadly arcane constructs of the Fallen Empire, the Fell Peaks have their own variants as well. Their construction arose from the constantly decreasing armies of the Fallen Empire, as an undead nation they had no means of increasing their population and an army of mindless undead lead by half a dozen intelligent sorcerers and officers can only do so much when led against an empire (the New Empire) that has been fighting undead for a few hundred years.

Fallen cannot truly die per se, their bodies can be destroyed and their minds silenced, but the energy of the Bleak Tyrant that animates them never really leaves their corpses. Artificers and sorcerers of the Fallen Empire found that this energy could be harnessed and bonded to a frame of metal to grant the construct it was bound to life. To do so they had to physically entomb the remains of Fallen within the shell of metal (or whatever material it was constructed of) and bind the power of the Bleak Tyrant in place with their own spells.

The result was an intelligent warrior that could not feel pain, thirst, exhaustion, or hunger. The side effect was that the remnants of the personalities entombed within the metal body (it often took several Fallen corpses rendered down to ash to power the animation spells) granted the soulless its own personality which developed as it aged. This is what is responsible for the echoing quality noticed in soulless speech patterns, as if several voices speak at once from within the metal monstrosity. There are also rare cases of latent personalities from the animating remains taking over the soulless they inhabit briefly, the more benign ones offering insight and experience to the soulless they inhabit.

Spineplate doesn't have that, he is alone in his head and perhaps doesn't remember a time before that was the case. He is a magitech device built by A'lst and powered by electricity and beltanizine. Beltanizine is my world specific metal that I have stated in game is a remnant of destroyed Kaleshmar. In the arcane disaster that caused the destruction of Kaleshmar all kinds of magic went haywire and the remnants of that continent mined in Beltan and other areas today is no different.

Because of the disaster beltanizine is like an arcane sponge (I have my reasons for it being so), it absorbs magic. The amount it absorbs is annoyingly random with rocks the size of houses absorbing only enough arcane energy to power a magic missile and pieces the size of fingernails absorbing energy to power fireballs and lightning bolts. The process of absorption is lengthy as well so it has little combat application, you can't draw a lightning bolt to your steel shield with its beltanizine plating and avoid damage, it doesn't work like that.

What it could do (if you got lucky enough to have the proper size stone on hand) is lay a rock on a wand of lightning bolts (if such ridiculously high fantasy things existed in my world, and they don't) for a few hours and the wand would become a stick and the stone would now have a lightning bolt spell stuck in it. Now you have a rock with a lightning bolt in it, which does nothing. Beltanizine has limited use to the common man, so it hasn't revolutionized any industry as of yet. Who it is of use to is thieves in the Fell Peaks or Fallen Empire that have a trap or chest on hand with magical protections that they can just drop a rock or two on and wait a while to open. Lockpicks made of beltanizine used slowly and carefully would slowly drain off the energy of alarm spells or traps without immediately tripping them, you just have to leave them where they are when you're done and hope they absorb enough of the spell to keep it from going off while your doing your looting in the next room.

A'lst (and a half dozen individuals like him) have developed a practical application for beltanizine. Beltanizine absorbs spells but does not naturally release their effects, you have a magic lump of rock. A'lst has discovered that with sufficiently high energy applied to the rock (constant electrical stimulation, immersion in fire or explosion, etc) you can cause the rock to use its absorbed spell. So if you threw your lightning rock into a huge bonfire or super hot oven, it would discharge its lightning bolt (almost constantly) before eventually melting (beltanizine has a relatively low melting point). Also, the absorbed spell is lost if you deform the rock too much, so you can't have a house sized rock with a neat effect carved and chipped down to hand sized.

How this relates to Spineplate is as follows: A'lst found a scrapped soulless a long time ago, one that was broken and busted but still functioning. He restrained it and then tore it open and fused a large piece of beltanizine to the remains within its chest. Eventually it died as its animating sorcery was absorbed by the ore. He then spent roughly three years perfecting the technology Abraxens use in their modern batteries to create a just barely workable and efficient self-replenishing power source based on charging the batteries with kinetic energy (Spineplate is a wind-up toy).

With the battery system providing constant current to Spineplate the beltanizine was able to power up the animating spells that gave the soulless life, and thus Spineplate was born. The personalities that had originally animated Spineplate's body were left in the ashes of their remains, only the animating sorcery of the Bleak Tyrant was absorbed by the beltanizine so Spineplate was left with no personality or learning, only the will to live.

A'lst is a little guy, but he has abilities and powers that made him more than a match for an unthinking metal beast. Eventually he was able to educate and teach Spineplate, A'lst even managed to teach him the complex tongue of his native language. Spineplate was forged of steel and wolf-iron to be a beast of war, so that was what he became, rather than a scholar like A'lst.

So that's a bit on Spineplate. Go team Kuh None.

(Also, I like Parentheses)